A/N: I'm sorry for the delay of this update, but I can explain. The day after uploading the previous chapter, I decided to start my morning by messing around on my dirtbike, which is a bad idea in the first place due to my ADHD. My easily drifting mind distracted me from focussing on the terrain and well... you know. But I wasn't going very fast so I walked away (literally) with only a few bruises and a dislocated shoulder and sprained wrist, both on my left arm.

A/N 2: This chapter is dedicated to pyroinfurno for helping me remember a few of Mercer's tricks.

A/N 3: In the Hush series, it is shown that Arkham has a bail-out system when Harvey Dent gets the Joker released "on bail... pending on [his] trial."

A/N 4: Every time somebody says or writes 'relationship' people immediately assume it's a highly intimate one. What ever happened to 'very close friendship' or platonic?

XXXXXX

Mercer looked at his prey with immense fury. They had just tried to kill him but failed miserably; he had survived a nuclear blast, so how could mere bullets possibly do any actual damage? They needed to be taught a lesson about knowing who they fucked with.

"You're either completely stupid or incredibly arrogant if you actually think you can take on my men, and win," Waller said to him with a straight face.

"Now I know that you're ignorant about me." Mercer said with his scowl as he walked in a semi circle around them to get Ivy, and to a lesser extent Batman, out of their line of fire. "Bring it."

"Fire at will," she said in an indifferent voice. The soldiers again emptied several rounds into him. He felt them penetrating him, but he paid absolutely no mind; he was beyond and above pain. Whatever they did to him, he could do something at least fifty times worse with a flick of his wrist. He slowly walked towards them, showing that they weren't doing anything to stop him, or even slow him down. He felt the urge to use a Devastator, but he didn't want them to see what he was capable of doing... even if it was only the tip of the iceberg. He drove his claw into the ground, and a cluster of spikes shot out of the ground and impaled three of the soldiers. The rest of their squad began panicking, but Waller just moved to the sidelines and watched silently with a small scowl of her own. He jumped into the middle of the soldiers and began hacking and slashing wildly with his blade, taking out several more of his weak prey as more and more bullets blasted into him. He jumped out of the chaos and changed his blade into his whipfist in midair. He turned to face the remaining good-as-dead lower lifeforms who were now so frightened of him they struggled to aim accurately at him. He reared his whipfist back, and lashed it out in a wide arc in front of him. The weaponized limb sliced through them like water, effectively separating their lower bodies from their upper. With all the soldiers gone, he turned his attention to Waller, who still didn't show any indication that she felt threatened or was afraid of him. He walked up to her changing his whipfist to claws and towered over her.

"I am impressed Mercer," she told him. "But you just made a very bad enemy." She wasn't threatening at all, it was as if she was telling him an obvious fact.

"What a coincidence." He thrusted his right arm forward so that his silver talons were nanometers from her eyes. "So did you." His voice actual did sound threatening but Waller again didn't show any obvious reaction. The only reason he didn't consume her was that if he did, he would have to pose as her for a long time since she was obviously in the high ranks with some large party.

"You haven't seen the last of me Mercer," she promised.

"I know that, and I will be the last thing you ever see," he promised back lowering his claws. He turned back to where he had started when the fight was about to begin, and if he still had an actual heart, it would have skipped a beat. Batman, his car, and Ivy were gone.

He balled his clawed hands into fists. "Batman... you fucking..." He growled through gritted teeth.

XXXXXX

Ivy slowly came awake. She blinked her eyes a few times to make her vision less blurry. When she could fully see, she saw Batman standing over her, looking down with his brooding face with Jeremiah Arkham next to him, also looking down at her. She looked past them and saw that wherever they were, it was completely white. She felt a small amount of irritation on her right wrist and looked over to see that she was lying down in a hospital bed and was handcuffed to it; the cuffs were black and looked vaguely like bat wings.

"Where am I?" she asked the two men.

"In a sealed-off Clean room in Gotham General," Jeremiah answered. "We couldn't take you back to your containment chamber because the barrier was destroyed."

"I understand why you are here," she said pointing her free hand at Batman. She then turned her arm and pointed at Jeremiah. "But why are you here too? Are we going to have a session or something?"

"Actually, I'm here to tell you that you're released on bail," he said.

"What?" Ivy asked with disbelief. "But who...?"

"Oswald Cobblepot." Batman answered her silent question.

"Don't ask us why," Jeremiah added. "He walked into my office, wrote me a check, signed the forms, and it was done and done. You're free. At least until you come back to us." He said the last part knowingly. He then walked out of the solid and thick transparent door on the other side of the room, leaving Ivy alone with Batman.

"How long have I been here?" she asked.

"Two days," he said. "You know, this situation has more to it than it seems."

"Like what?" Ivy asked, her confusion growing.

"The fact that Penguin spent a portion of his money on something that's not beneficial to himself is strange enough." Batman started. "But what's really strange is that bailing you out was the first time anyone had seen him since the Iceberg Lounge disaster."

"Well maybe I just like the company of a fine woman, Batman," a new voice said from over at the door. Batman and Ivy turned to see Oswald Cobblepot walking over to them with an umbrella in his hand and a weird smile on his face. "After all, I basically locked myself away from the world for over two weeks."

"I've got my eyes on you two," Batman warned. He then began walking away towards the window.

"Batman, wait a second!" Cobblepot called out after him reaching his free out towards him. Batman stopped and turned to look at his longtime foe who then turned turned his outstretched arm over so that his open palm was facing the sky. He then grew his strange grin again. "Those cuffs on the dame look like they belong to you, so I trust that you have a key?"

Batman looked at him in silence for a moment and then walked over to Ivy. Out of nowhere, he produced a black key, and unlocked the cuffs, first on the bed's railing, and then around Ivy's arm. She rubbed her now free wrist with her other hand. Batman then noiselessly went to the window and jumped out of it. Penguin and Ivy heard his grappling gun discharge and he swung away into the young night.

Ivy then turned to Penguin with a demanding face. "Alright Cobblepot, I'm not you or any of your business partners, so why are you helping me?"

He let out a chuckle. "How could I let you stay in there when I cleanly got away?"

Ivy looked at him with irritated confusion, but her face became more shocked as black ooze seemed to seep out of Penguin's skin until it completely covered him and his clothes. He then began to change shape; he became thinner and taller. His tophat seemed to melt down until it had a rounded top. The ooze was then absorbed into the new person standing before her and smirking at her.

"Besides, it was pretty obvious you hated it in there," Alex said to her.

"You can look and sound exactly like anybody?" Ivy said with a small smile across her lips. She lifted herself out of the bed. She was still dressed the way she had been in Arkham.

"Well not everybody," Mercer admitted. "Just those I consume." They made they're way to the window Batman had left through earlier. Mercer picked up Ivy and jumped off the ledge. He continued holding onto her until they arrived at the Iceberg Lounge. The news of the massive shoot-out at the club still had a lot of people scared, so the 'owner' had it shut down until things cooled off and died down. The place was deserted so the two of them just walked through the front door.

"What exactly are we doing here?" Ivy asked curiously.

"Well, 'Cobblepot' wanted to have a change in his life, so he decided to travel the world and signed owner ship of the Lounge to Alex Mercer."

"I guess looking and sounding like someone else has several advantages." Ivy said. "What else can... consuming do for you?"

"I get all of their memories. So now all Penguin's money is now my money. Oh, and all his properties too." He looked around the very large room. "Let's get out of here. This place... I don't know what it is..."

XXXXXX

Batman was sitting in front of his supercomputer inside his Cave. He was deep in thought, trying to find a reason why Penguin would help someone who didn't work with him.

"Hey Bruce! I finally found something!" Nightwing called over to him on the other side of the large ledge they were on. Batman got out of his chair and walked over to his former ward who had one of his gloves off and was looking into a microscope. He lifted his head up and looked at his old mentor. "Look at this."

Batman looked into the scope and saw the black ooze. Nightwing then scraped off a small piece of his skin and placed it on the glass with the ooze. The slime instantly moved over to the skin sample and covered it. A second later, the ooze seemed to shrink and it changed its color until it was a perfect replica of the living tissue it had just consumed. A few seconds later, it reverted back to its dark self.

"Whatever Mercer is fighting with," Nightwing started as Batman lifted his head up and looked at him. "It can destroy any living thing it comes in contact with, and then perfectly imitate it at will."

"Perfect imitation..." Batman trailed off as he thought back to earlier when Penguin arrived at the hospital. He then realized that it wasn't Penguin at all.

"Where do you think he got this?" Nightwing asked putting his glove back on.

Batman then remembered what Oracle had told him about Mercer, about how he was a researcher for bio-weapons. "I think he played a part in creating it."

XXXXXX

Zsasz was sitting in his silent cell with all his restraints on him. Suddenly the door opens, and he raises his head to see a guard walking in and then closing the steel door behind him.

"Can I help you?" Zsasz asked in his naturally creepy voice.

"Your insanity case was thrown out," the guard said flatly. "You're now on death row."

"What?" Zsasz couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"I'm afraid so... Vic."

Zsasz then looked at the guard with confused interest. The only one had ever called him Vic was Zeus.

"And you're on the very top of the list," the guard said with a smirk. He suddenly turned completely black, changed shape, and the next thing Zsasz knew, Zeus was standing before him. "You're execution is right now."

XXXXXX

Eight seconds later, a guard came sprinting out of Zsasz's cell, screaming.

"Zsasz is loose! Victor Zsasz is loose!"

XXXXXX

Alex landed on the balcony outside the penthouse he had 'inherited' from Penguin and opened the bullet-proof glass doors. The instant he closed the door and stepped into the dark room, he knew something was wrong.

"Where's Ivy?" a voice in the dark said to him. He instantly recognized it.

"Out and about. Something I can do for you Batman?" He didn't see a point in lying to the Detective.

The Dark Knight stepped into the moonlight. "You can tell me what you did to Penguin and Zsasz."

"What makes you think I did anything?" He wasn't going to lie, but he also wasn't going to pass up a chance to play a little mind game with the World's Greatest Detective.

"Penguin disappears without a trace after Zeus attacks his club, and then weeks later he brings himself out of wherever he was and bails out the one person Alex Mercer actually showed no negative feelings towards during his stay in Arkham. Then he gives all his assets and property to Mercer as well before claiming that he plans to go on a soul search around the world. Victor Zsasz was Zeus' first attempted kill, and he knew who Zeus really was, and now he's apparently escaped from Arkham without anybody seeing him or getting hurt. That is not what happens with Zsasz."

Alex smirked at him and took the form of Penguin. "Maybe I just really like the young guy." He then changed himself into Zsasz. "I just randomly had a change of heart." Mercer turned back into himself. He could tell that even though Batman wasn't showing it, he was shocked by what he had just witnessed. "At least nobody will ever have to worry about either of them again."

Batman observed him silently for a moment. "You continue to surprise me at every turn Mercer."

"I've got more tricks than you've got toys."

"When will it be enough for you Alex?" Batman asked as he walked toward the balcony. "When will you finally be able to forgive yourself?" He fired his grappling gun and once again vanished into the night.